The crew of Columbia
completed the second of five planned spacewalks this morning with the
successful installation of a new port solar array and a new Reaction
Wheel Assembly (RWA) on the Hubble Space Telescope.

Spacewalkers Jim
Newman and Mike Massimino spent seven hours 16 minutes installing the
new equipment. Massimino, on his first spacewalk and Newman, making
his fifth spacewalk, began their work at 12:40 a.m. CST. Newman and
Massimino first removed the old port solar array and stowed it in Columbia’s
payload bay for a return to Earth. They then installed a third-generation
solar array and its associated electrical components, the Diode Box
Assembly. When the solar array installation was complete, the spacewalkers
moved on to the removal and replacement of the RWA. Nancy Currie once
again used the shuttle’s robotic arm to maneuver the spacewalkers to
and from the worksite at the port array of the telescope and the RWA
in Bay 6.

Initial validation
tests performed by the Space Telescope Operations Control Center in
Greenbelt, Md. indicate that the new solar array and reaction wheel
assembly are working flawlessly. The new RWA is one of four pointing
devices on the telescope that uses its spin to control Hubble’s position,
providing a steady view of the universe for the telescope’s sensitive
cameras.

Toward the end
of their spacewalk, Newman and Massimino also installed a thermal blanket
on Bay 6, door stop extensions on Bay 5, and foot restraints in preparation
for tomorrow’s spacewalk by John Grunsfeld and Rick Linnehan.

The spacewalkers
also tested two bolts on the telescope’s aft shroud doors. Those doors
protect the Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer (NICMOS)
and the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS.) The two spacewalkers
determined that the bottom of the two bolts required replacement and
an aft shroud latch replacement kit was used to ensure that both bolts
keep the door tightly closed.

During the spacewalk,
Columbia Commander Scott Altman and Pilot Duane Carey used television
and still-photo cameras to document the work, while monitoring systems
onboard Columbia. Grunsfeld and Linnehan, who will be outside Columbia
tomorrow for the third spacewalk of the mission, assisted Newman and
Massimino from the aft flight deck.

The crew is scheduled
to awaken at 7:52 p.m. CST. The next STS-109 mission status report will
be issued Tuesday evening after crew wakeup, or as events warrant.

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